Isabel Fernandez-Mateo - Women leading the Worldwide Conversation

Adecco Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo is the fourth woman we are profiling, following her participation in the University of London’s ‘worldwide conversation’ in London.

Written by Binda Rai &vert; 16 Oct 2018

Dr Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, a native of Spain, holds the Adecco Chair at London Business School.

Women leading the worldwide conversation

Isabel Fernandez-Mateo brought with her an academic perspective, as well as a wealth of personal experience to bear on the conversation.

Dr Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, a native of Spain, holds the Adecco Chair at London Business School. As Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, she teaches in various degree and executive education programmes, where she lectures on the value of social networks for client management, careers and leadership.

Dr Fernandez-Mateo gained her PhD in 2004 from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Organization Science, Management Science and other academic journals. She is on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, and Sociological Science, and is an associate editor of Management Science.

Dr Fernandez-Mateo’s research focuses on economic sociology. She studies how firms and individuals create and capture economic value through their social interactions. Much of her work focuses on the role of social networks in career outcomes, particularly in hiring, job transitions and career advancement. Dr Fernandez- Mateo’s current research projects aim to understand the organisational and social barriers that prevent women’s access to top management positions.

An example of Dr Fernandez-Mateo’s research in this area is ‘Leaning Out: How Negative Recruitment Experiences Shape Women’s Decisions to Compete for Executive Roles’ (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2017). In the paper she says: ‘Companies must take a hard look at their recruiting and promotion processes to assess whether they are indeed fair — and, just as important, whether those processes are perceived to be fair, especially by women and other minorities.’

This paper also demonstrates that, due to their past experiences as a negatively stereotyped minority, women are less likely than men to apply for executive roles after having been rejected, but executive search firms have a key role to play in increasing the number of appointments for women.

It’s not just what you know. Your success depends just as much on the people you surround yourself with.

To find out more about the exceptional women leaders who participated in the launch of the University of London’s ‘worldwide conversation’, please see links to the profiles already published: